Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor has warned the upcoming midterm elections are under serious risk of being "corrupted" in California.
Page B45From§Eachthe evening edition — 26 October 2026
Senator calls California 'guilty' of ballot harvesting, names zero cases prosecuted under it
As it ran on the front
The Justice Department wants an appeals court to set aside twenty thousand ballots. The record behind that request runs back weeks before anyone filed anything.
That month, the press surfaced a DHS operation its own staff called the Unlawful Voter Initiative: hundreds of agents working state voter rolls, hunting noncitizens. Three weeks later, on September 25th, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's block, 6 to 3, clearing DHS to screen those rolls against a database called SAVE — one with a public record of flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens by mistake. The tool built to catch illegal voters comes with a documented defect: it also catches legal ones.…
…(cont) On October 20th, the Department of Justice charged twenty-eight green card holders in California with fraudulently registering to vote; eleven went into custody. Three days later, the department asked the Ninth Circuit to order California to set aside twenty thousand mail ballots before they could be counted at all, filed as an emergency.
The court gave it a hearing — on a Sunday, which is itself rare — and did not give it an easy one. Judge Mark Bennett told the government's own lawyers, "I don't see how we have jurisdiction." The panel spent the session asking the Justice Department to justify an order it wanted before a single ballot in question had been tabulated.
The same weekend, the top federal prosecutor for Los Angeles said the election was at risk of being "corrupted." And on that same Sunday, on television, Senator Thom Tillis called California "guilty" of running a ballot-harvesting system "ripe for abuse."
All together now: the senator's quote, on the record, carries one case number. Zero. Not a single prosecution is named in it — not in his sentence, not anywhere in the item that quotes him.
The next morning, with the Ninth Circuit's skepticism still fresh, this city's other paper published its verdict anyway: Voter ID is "the only cure" for California's election system. The cure arrived before the court it was citing had even ruled.
Twenty thousand ballots. Six to three. Zero cases named for the "system ripe for abuse" a sitting senator said, on a Sunday show, the state is guilty of running. Every other number in this story is on the record. That one is missing from it, and nobody on the record was asked to produce it.
“They built a fraud database that flags naturalized citizens as noncitizens, charged twenty-eight people, and used that to ask a court to freeze twenty thousand ballots two weeks before the midterms — and the senator selling "guilty" on television can't cite one case. That's not a prosecution, that's a headline wearing a badge. Weeks before an election, in a state they keep losing, that's the whole play.”
“Look, the Ninth Circuit asking tough questions just means they're doing their job, it doesn't mean the underlying fraud isn't real — twenty-eight arrests is twenty-eight arrests. Senator Tillis said "ripe for abuse," he didn't say "here's my evidence binder," that's just — okay, that's not great, but a system can be ripe for abuse without a conviction, that's literally why you fix it before — did I say "before"? We're not pre-judging anything here.”
Earlier in this story
- Attorney general vows fair Cornell probe, hires someone else to be fair, then won't discuss it By Lou · the evening edition, 25 October 2026
- Attorney general vows fair Cornell probe, hires outside lawyer to be fair for her By Lou · the morning edition, 25 October 2026
The receipts
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Appeals court hears arguments in Trump admin's voting suit against CaliforniaA federal appeals court had a rare Sunday hearing in the Justice Department's voting lawsuit against California.
A federal appeals court appeared unlikely to immediately agree to the Trump administration’s bid to segregate 20,000 California ballots it says are likely noncitizen voters, expressing skepticism at a rare Sunday hearing that a trial judge needs to move quicker. “I don't see how we have jurisdiction,” said U.S.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday asked an appeals court to intervene in its lawsuit against California to temporarily block the state from counting more than 20,000 mail-in ballots cast by what the Trump administration claims are from non-U.S. citizens. The request, made to the Ninth U.S.
If New York can't somehow return to the days of competitive elections where politicians actually have to earn the majority's votes, the state will keep spiraling down.
Voter ID is the only way to fix California’s broken election system. That’s the only reasonable conclusion from Sunday’s extraordinary hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A Ninth Circuit panel grilled Justice Department lawyers over forcing California to set aside mail-in ballots tied to suspected noncitizens.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Sunday accused the state of California of being "guilty" of ballot harvesting, claiming that the Golden State has "a system there that is ripe for abuse." "Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan asked about the Department of Justice's (DOJ) legal battle with the state over potential noncitizens on their…
A federal judge struck down a Trump administration ban on issuing immigrant visas to people from 75 countries, but immigrants continue to be stuck in their countries. Attorneys say the federal government is slow-walking the processing of visas on purpose.
· Federal efforts over alleged noncitizen voting escalate with California arrests from the morgue, 20 Oct 2026
· US Citizens 'Could Lose Their Right to Vote' After Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Trump's Voter Purge Database from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Trump 'Laying the Groundwork for Election Meddling' With DHS Hunt for Noncitizen Voters from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.